Gotenba '07!

Hello everyone! This weekend we went up to Gotenba. It was a great time. The food and drink were splendid, and company was fun, and I think for the most part everyone had a good time. All of that for under $200 for the three of us.

Something new for me was the onsen, which is a hot spring system. In this case it's not natural, but there are plenty of natural Onsens in Japan. It was a new experience to say the least, and it was very relaxing.

It was something like 8:30 or 9:00 the night we got to Gotenba, we had already gone to the Outlet Mall and we had just come back from our eating, drinking and other revelry.
We paid a mere ¥1000 per ticket and then we went up to the hotel that is part of the resort area we were staying on.
We checked in at the door and went up several flights of stairs to a locker room where there were lots of naked Japanese men wandering around with modesty towels on. (These are basically hand towels that you can drape over your groin region as you walk around.) After being shown an empty locker by the old lady who worked in the locker room (That was pretty weird, but you shrug and carry on.), we got undressed, locked our stuff up and went into the next room. This next room was basically covered in stone and marble tile with sit down shower stalls lining the walls. There were a couple of small pools on one side of the room and one large pool next to the outside wall, which was all glass looking out onto another pool which was outside on the roof of the hotel building.
So sitting on our little stools, we showered and made ourselves clean. Then we walked through another door outside. It was just a little chilly to say the least. But we made our way to another pool of hotwater and sighed as we sunk into the water. How nice it was. The pools themselves were pretty large, with enough perimeter length to accomodate about 15-20 people. Everything was steaming and with the sides lined with rocks, there was the sound of gently flowing water as the recirrculated and reheated hot water flowed over the rock facade as you would see in a natural setting. The perimeter of the pools were also lined with the rocks.

There was also a cold pool you could dip into once you were good and hot, and there was a sauna you could sit in to further your relaxation. We did everything. I sat in the hot tub for about 45 minutes, sat in the cold tub for 5 minutes, then jumped back into the hot tub, then went into the sauna for a while and then into the cold tub for another 5 minutes, and finally back into the hot tub for 30 minutes before calling it a night. It was very relaxing.

So if you are ever in Japan, I recommend visiting an Onsen.

~jp